How To Get Rid of Excessive Negative Emotions

How To Get Rid of Excessive Negative Emotions

Emotions - are how we feel about something – something that make us happy, angry, sad, disappointed, excited etc. Emotions can be bad and good. It depends on how we express our emotions.

Dealing with emotions is complicated and time consuming. According to Richard Cockrum, in his articles on November 15, 2006, there are several things we have to realize first:-

• You sustain your own emotional state, not anything outside you.
• Emotion is the result of beliefs, especially evaluative beliefs.
• Emotions result from identifying with beliefs.
• The beliefs generating the emotion are things you are telling yourself.
• If you don’t want to change, you won’t.
• Most emotions are situational.

You may suffer from stage-fright. You may get a cold and wet hand before the presentation. You may get angry with your subordinate for not doing the job as specific accordingly to the job scope. You may get angry and hurt when your spouse married another one more or having an affair with another woman or man. You may get angry when you’re 15 minutes late for work and stuck in a traffic jam. You may get angry and disappointed with your boss for not taking the problem of his or her workers and staff seriously.

Basically, you need to focus on one situation at a time. Don’t try to work with emotions in general. And remember that you emotions may affect people around you…especially when you get too emotional…you will not think, act and speak accordingly and rationally and you might hurt other people’s feeling and thoughts.

Be Open

Open the doors and invite others into the auditorium of your mind. If you can’t open it wide, just open it slowly…it you can’t open it slowly, just open it a little and allow people you trust to explore and understand your emotions.

Emotions expecially negative emotions, are largely reactive…it’s like a volcano waiting to explode. When you’re in the actual situation especially on the negative emotions, it can be almost impossible not to be overwhelmed by the emotions.

Try hard to control it…and from my point of view…when I have a negative emotions, just keep quiet and away from other people, as I might be afraid that something bad coming from my act or from my word and eventually hurting other people’s feeling.

However, sometimes you need to express it because people might not know what is it in your mind…how do you feel about something especially something that is not right and appropriate.

Ellis and Harper, in A Guide To Rational Living, list 10 irrational thoughts that people tend to have that sustain negative emotions. These are:-

• I have to be loved and admired by almost everyone for almost everything I do. If they don’t, I’m worthless.
• I should be competent, adequate, and achieving in everything I do. If I’m not, I’m worthless.
• I am inherently evil or bad and should be blamed and punished for their sins. I’m worthless and not responsible for what I do.
• It is horrible when things don’t go the way I don’t them to go.
• Other people make me unhappy and I can’t control my feelings or get rid of negative feelings. I’m not responsible for how I feel.
• If something is or may be dangerous or fearsome, I should be preoccupied with it and upset about it.
• It is easier to avoid difficulty and self-responsibility than to assume some form of self-discipline that can lead to rewards.
• The past is all-important and should affect me for the rest of my life.
• People should be different from the way they are and catastrophe will happen if we don’t do something about it.
• I can be happiest by doing nothing and passively enjoying myself.

This is the hard part. You need to replace the negative emotions with positive, or at least neutral.

This can literally take years, or it may happen in one night. It depends on how deeply attached you are to the emotion. Over time, the negative thoughts will go away, taking with them the excessive negative emotion. You didn’t accept them. They won’t stay. You accept them, it will last long enough in your life that you might forget how beautiful life is for you to live to the fullest. Don’t let the negative thoughts and emotions conquer and haunted your life. The choice is yours.

Sometimes leaving a destructive situation is the best thing you can do. There is no reason to subject yourself to abuse for the sake of a job, a husband, a wife or of others. You are not them. Your worth doesn’t depend on them.

Meditation gives us the time to just be, to detach from our mind, body,and emotions. In the process it helps provide structural changes in our emotions, often without our being aware of them, that leads to long term emotional improvement. For Muslims, praying is one of the way to meditate… mengadu kepadaNya adalah sebaik-baik pengaduan. Meditation / Praying for me is the best way to remove my negative emotions…that is the time where you are alone with your God and feel that He is always be with you in what ever situations you are – good or bad.

Wallahua’lam